The Federal Government has proposed making available radio frequency spectrum (e.g. 100 MHz within the 3.5 GHz range) that is currently reserved for government and military uses to commercial vendors. For example, the radio frequency spectrum that is to be shared by the Government users is in the frequency ranges typically used for military or air-traffic control radars (airborne and ship-borne), air-ground/ground-air communications, and other uses, which are often intermittent uses.
An initial proposal establishes a tiered priority access system. The first tier (Tier 1) is reserved Government and military incumbent operations who are the highest priority and the highest power-emitting users. The next tier (Tier 2) would be Priority Access/Commercial Wireless Network Providers (e.g. Verizon®, AT&T® and the like), who are proposed to have a mid-level priority, and the third tier (Tier 3) with the lowest priority would be General Authorized Access (GAA) users. The proposed spectrum sharing paradigms allow the GAA users to use low power access point (APs) devices and low-power end user devices (EUDs) to operate at one or multiple channels of the shared radio frequency spectrum, which may also include channels that are shared with these other systems.
As a result, in some cases, the shared band includes operation of dissimilar systems, including Tier 1 high power, pulsed radars. In close proximity to the military radars and other high power radiating systems, there may be a zone around these radar/other radiating systems where the radiated power level is so high as to be a ‘burn-out’ threat to the electronics in the GAA user's devices and systems that share the frequency spectrum with the high power system.
Hence a need exists for a self-protection mechanism to allow these GAA systems to exist in close proximity to the high powered users by not operating in the shared band during the high powered operations of the high powered users.